Sacred Circles' Coven

HIstory of Scents

AROMATHERAPY PAST AND PRESENT

Aromatherapy has been practiced throughout history: from the Middle East to the Midieval and Renaissance Europe to modern Europe and the United States. It may be more popular now than at any time since the early nineteenth century. And occasionally one cannot help wondering: Is there something these older cultures knew that newer cultures don't?

Even if you can't accept the idea that oil of rose or hyacinth might sharpen the mind or lily and narcissus put it to sleep, are you not tempted by the idea of aromatic massage or bath? Wouldn't you rather be surrounded by pleaseant natural smells than by chemical aerosols or antiseptics?

If foods contain nutritional essences that can make us healthier and stronger, can't plants contain aromatic essences that might do the same?

Excellent herbs had our fathers of old, Excellent herbs to ease their pain, Alexanders and Marigold, Eyebright, Orris and Elecampane.

MYSTERIES OF SCENT

Now, we are moving into a wonderous area of healing that has been going on for many thousands of years. In Egypt, the priests, magicians, and others who believed in the power of the gods used this method in healing their ill.

Honey, was one of the treatments used for wounds or bites. I have used this myself, and it does work. I had a mosquito bite on my leg and I put some pure honey on it, and it was completly gone by the next morning. It is messy, but it works.

So, now we go into the Mysteries of Scents.

Incense has been an integral part of religious ceremonies for many centuries all acroos the globe, largely because of the soothing effect its smell has on the mind~and soul.

Temples in India have been historically constructed of sandlewood not only because of its superior material qualities but also because of the spiritual ones of its scent.

Nubians, who rarely bathe in water because it is so scarce in northern Africa, rub themselves all over with dough and then oil their bodies throughly with aromatics. Skin disease is virtually unknown among them, and they're hardly bothered by the cold, cutting winds that sweep through the desert in winter.

In the fourteenth century, the Black Death wiped out half of the population of Eurpoe, yet those who dealt with aromatic oils and essences, especially perfumers, were almost entirely unaffectd by the plague. Five hundred years, later perfurmers again remained immune to the gastly cholera epidemics raging throughout the world.

To reduce stress and improve efficiency, Japenese construction firms pipe aromatic essences to their employees through their air conditioning systems.

In eighteenth century England perfumes were banned for a time, because they deemed "too seductive". Women who wore them could even have been prosecuted for sorcery.

Cleopatra is renowned throughout the world as one of history's great temptresses. Some historians believe, however, that she lured men not through any particular physical beauty but through the seductions of her scent. The Egyptian ruler raised the use of perfumes and skin treatment to an art form and owned a vast herbal gardent that would be worth millions today. This may have been the true secret of the legendary Queen of the Nile.

What do all these unrelated curiousities have in common? Scents, oils, and aromatic essences. Philosophers, scientists, and medical practitioners have known for thousands of years that various plants and herbs possess mysterious properties, from the tranuilizing to the hallucinogenic, from the poisonous to the sweet. These properties have been tested, explored, examined, philosophized about, and even synthesized throughout the ages, and they've been used in cooking, cleaning, healing, performing religious ceremonies, preparing cosmetics and perfumes, preserving food, and even preserving bodies through mummification.

Why did citizens burn pine branches in the streets of the medieval Europe? Because the smoke helped fend off the bubonic plague. What would a Renaissance physician have prescribed to calm your blood? Oil of Hyssop. Scent is one of the most mysterious of entities, and some scientists and philosophers even believe that the sense of smell may be closely related to the proverbal "sixth sense"
It certainly works more quickly on the brain than sight, sound, taste, or touch. When the mystery of scent is harnessed for healing, curing, and restoring the mind and body to its fullest efficiency, this process is called aromatherapy. It has been around for thousands of years.

THE ESSENCE OF AROMATHERAPY

Aromatherapy was practiced by the Indian, Chinese, and Egyptian cultures of four and five thousand years ago, and its distinguished history continues to this day. It is related to or allied with other venerable medical practices, such as acupuncture, hydotheapy, and homopathy, all of which share certain vital principles is the idea that when the body {which includes the mind} is in proper condition, everything is in harmony. When that harmony, or balance, is distrubed, illness or injury intervenes. Treatment is then needed to restore nature's bala nce.

Aromatherapy is exactly what the word suggests: the use of aroma, or rather aromatic essences, as therapy, a way of healing, curing, and toning the body and mind. Aromatic essences are the heart and soul of herbs and plants that give them their smell, their taste, their potency, and any medicinal properties they might contain. They make curry hot; they make coffee beans bitter. They give to camphor those tingling qualities that make you feel slightly icy when you have a cold and that instantly clear out clogged sinuses. Rubbing preparations of camphor oil on the chest of a cold sufferer is a classic example of aromatherapy ~ using essences of aromatic {good or powerful~smelling} plants to help restore the body's balance. It's no more complicated or arcane than that.

Many of the tenets of aromatherapy are commonsensical and profound in their simplicitiy. If a body feels cold, it should be heated, so oil of clove, pimento, or black pepper might be used. If a body feels hot, it should be cooled; camphor or eucalyptus may do the trick. Mint may soothe the skin. Frankincense can be used to clear mucous membranes, melissa to tone the entire system.

You can bathe in waters steeped in aromatic essences. You can have elaborate body massages in which aromatic oils are rubbed into every pore. You can apply poultices marinated in aromatic preparations, inhale vapors compounded of aromatic curatives, burn incense, rub on ointments, get facials with special creams; take baths in special muds, be "fumigated" or "smoked" {similar to sweating in a sauna spiced with aromatic herbs}, or drink camomile tea.

All these, performed properly and with the correct ingredents, are aromatherapy. Burning a cone of incense you bought for ninety~nine cents at the local store may not lead to much, but burning incense prepared with genuine essence of sandlewood or myrrth could directly afffect your psyche, which in turn will affect your body. That is a form of aromatherapy. Other forms, however, are more classic.

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